Rockstar Games' hacking problem in Grand Theft Auto Online has only gotten worse following Grand Theft Auto V's release on the Epic Games Store. Even though the title has been available for multiple consoles (and the PC) starting from all the way back in 2013, there was so much demand to grab Grand Theft Auto V for free that the recent giveaway ended up crashing the Epic Games Store launcher altogether.
Despite the game's age, Grand Theft Auto Online is still providing players with a continually-updating experience. Not only did Rockstar Games recently introduce F1 racing into GTA Online but they have also been giving away vehicles, cash, and other prizes in the Diamond Casino & Resort. Currently, the online mode of Grand Theft Auto V is also filled with a large number of purple and green jumpsuit-wearing players pretending to be aliens, some of which are currently embroiled in war.
According to a recent article by Kotaku, aliens aren't the only thing players should be watching out for, as hacking in Grand Theft Auto Online appears to have gotten even more out of control since the game's release on the Epic Games Store. There seems to be no limit to the weird mods appearing out of the blue in Grand Theft Auto Online, and reports have been made about "things like spawning hundreds of large planes, crashing servers, or trapping players in cages." One particularly disturbing image which originally appeared on the Grand Theft Auto Online subreddit shows a massive robot apparently created by mashing together dozens of tanks, planes, and helicopters. Check it out below:
While Grand Theft Auto Online's hacking problem has gotten unarguably worse in the last few years, it seems like the game's free Epic Games Store giveaway has finally tipped the scales into these modder's hands. Kotaku even reports that "some modders and hackers can pester players who are still connected to Rockstar's servers, even when playing GTAV single-player," which is definitely something which should not be possible for them to do.
There's nothing wrong with modding a video game in order to make the experience more enjoyable, but when those modifications are done either at the expense of or with the full intention of harming the experience of other players, then it becomes a different conversation entirely. Rockstar is likely working hard to try and get all of Grand Theft Auto Online's hacking problems under control, but so many new players in such a short amount of time is sure to make such a task exponentially more difficult. For the sake of the single-player fanbase, hopefully Rockstar finds some solutions soon.
Source: impunto/Reddit (via Kotaku)